South Korea's faked safety certificates: just another nuclear scandal

One of the defining factors of the nuclear industry is its refusal to learn the lessons of the past. It's built a lousy reputation for trust and transparency and public confidence in the industry has been massively dented by repeated scandals and accidents.

So, logically speaking, rigorous safety checks must have been put in place since then to prevent a repeat incident, right? Wrong.

Two more nuclear reactors in South Korea were shutdown on Tuesday and the scheduled start of two others was delayed. Why? Because an anonymous whistleblower revealed that “control cables had been supplied to [the] four reactors with faked certificates even though the part had failed to pass a safety test.”

The Kori nuclear power plant, one of the closed sites

These control cables are used to send electronic signals to a reactor’s control system in the event of an accident. Clearly then, they need to be in good order.

But someone, or some people, certified them as safe even though these vital components had failed safety tests. This is terrifying and it took an anonymous whistleblower to bring it to light.

After last year’s substandard parts scandal, the South Korean government and nuclear authorities should have been making more stringent safety checks. What else is waiting to be discovered?

The Kori nuclear power plant is a certified threat to our safety

But this, it seems, is business as usual for the nuclear industry. We see these types of scandals time and time again. For 60 years nuclear power has had our money, resources and safety in its hands and we’ve had little in return but empty promises, lies and scandal.

This is why Greenpeace says reactor designers and builders and other players in the nuclear industry, not just the operators, should be made responsible for their mistakes. Right now, governments have a protection scheme that shields the nuclear industry from responsibility – a responsibility that many companies simply disregard.

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Jan Beranek
says:

Let's make two things clear: 1) nuclear energy in Korea is 100 % dependent on imported fuels, 2) this crisis - if it comes - would be triggered by...

Let's make two things clear: 1) nuclear energy in Korea is 100 % dependent on imported fuels, 2) this crisis - if it comes - would be triggered by nothing else than the this country's dependency on vulnerable, unreliable nuclear energy and deeply rooted dodgy practices of related industries.

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@Obi - Greenpeace does not do alchemy. The thorium reactors are currently still far from being a revolution. They may reduce part of the radwaste problem and part of the limited uranium problem, they do not solve all of it and increase the chances of proliferation by the spread of reprocessing technology. Apart from that, commercial TLFMS reactors are still quite some time away and we need to peak CO2 emissions in 2015 - not in 2035! The technologies for the energy [r]evolution that is needed do not need to be developed on the basis of dodgy claims from an industry that has never delivered on its promises in the past - the technologies are already there: energy efficiency technologies and a host of renewable technologies.

Oh yes, and we did not talk about costs yet... Greenpeace / EREC's energy [r]evolution scenario (http://www.energyblueprint.info) will cost less than business as usual. Like the current generation 3, generation 4 nuclear reactors are prohibitively expensive. And the most they can do is push down greenhouse gas emissions with a few percent points, if at all, in 2050. We need to be more than 50% down globally by that time and 90% down in the OECD countries.

Short: GEN4 comes too late, offers too little, to a too high price, and leaves most of the drawbacks of nuclear power on the table. That's why :-)

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(Unregistered) hey
says:

I should have been more explicit: by fuel I meant smth that we burn to obtain energy (gas, oil, wood, coal, etc.). These demand a continuous supply an...

I should have been more explicit: by fuel I meant smth that we burn to obtain energy (gas, oil, wood, coal, etc.). These demand a continuous supply and have a greater negative impact on environment than nuclear fuel. A nuclear station can work for 1-2 years without supplying. That makes them more independent from imports. I don't get why some call it vulnerable but it's clear that South Korean officials should make something with corruption and organised criminality. In any case it's not South Korean nuclear industry dodgy as there are other countries that nobody knows what the hell they are doing under the cover of peaceful nuclear energy.

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@hey - South Korea's alternative for dodgy nuclear is not coal, oil or a dash for gas. The alternatives are energy efficiency and a host of renewable energy sources. You can find more details on: http://www.energyblueprint.info/fileadmin/media/documents/national/2012/05_gpi_south_korea_lr.pdf

We agree with you that fossil fuels need to be phased out and in OECD countries from electricity generation well before 2050.

We don't agree that you can compare the environmental impacts of coal and nukes easily. Both are harmful, both have to be phased out.

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(Unregistered) hey
says:

The renewable sources of energy are dependent on climatic factors. While the previous civilizations did their best to decrease this influence, we turn...

The renewable sources of energy are dependent on climatic factors. While the previous civilizations did their best to decrease this influence, we turn back and hope for clear sky and wind for next centuries. This dependence causes significant variations of produced energy daily and seasonally (especially solar power). Also we don't know the effects of excecive exploitation of climatic sources of energy. In addition it would be an expensive investment even for South Korea. South Korean government would rather buy electricity from other countries or build some temporary fossil fuel power stations and extend the old ones. They invested a lot in nuclear technologies and it would be logical not to give it up. If we stop now we may never find others, yet unknown, possibilities radioactive elements and nuclear technologies.
P.S. I CAN compare the environmental impacts of coal and uranium: France (75% nuclear) have a much higher air quality than China (70% coal). Others can just ignore that fact.

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@hey - thanks for these interesting inputs.
People did not move away from renewable energy sources because of climatic effects. As Dutchman, I have studied the change from wind energy to pump empty our polders to the use of steam engines. The reasons were the higher capacity that steam engines could deliver compared by the relatively low capacity of traditional wind mills. Current wind turbines dwarf the capacity of these steam engines again.
There is quite a bit known about influence of wind energy and solar energy on micro-climate. One of the reasons is that the construction of these plants always has to undergo an Environmental Impact Assessments in the countries where we have seen largest growth (Denmark, Germany, Spain, Portugal, US). It is not something that I think we should worry too much about.
Your remarks concerning Korea's investments in nuclear hit the nail on the head: we see it time and again how these economic arguments take over the priority that nuclear safety should have. However, your nuclear power stations were built with a lot of subsidy - they are currently largely written off.
Of course, it is impossible to predict how our current knowledge about radioactivity could lead to new ideas. The ideas we have currently on the table are far from hope-giving, though: the so called Generation IV reactors prove a lot more complex, expensive and proliferation prone than so far assumed and it is unlikely that they would ever be able to reach commercial maturity before 2030... far too late to combat climate change. Nuclear fusion is even further away from reality. It is much more logical now to look at the already proven and working renewable technologies - also for Korea.
I fully agree with you that coal is a killer concerning air quality - and also has a huge impact on the climate. We need to phase that out as well. But to compare nuclear and coal on one or two criteria is a bit bland. Both create large problems, both need to be gotten rid off in favour of really clean and safe and abundant renewable energy sources.

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(Unregistered) hey
says:

I want to mention one more time that wind turbines and solar panels are dependent and vulnerable on climatic conditions. The wind turbines would produ...

I want to mention one more time that wind turbines and solar panels are dependent and vulnerable on climatic conditions. The wind turbines would produce more energy in winter than in summer, but would be shout down in case of freezing or of storms. Solar energy needs constant clear sky. In the winter when the energy consumption is higher, it produces less electricity. Countries with the largest growth of wind energy exploitation that you've mentioned are either producing these turbines and try to minimize the effects of the economical crisis by encouraging these industry (US, Germany and Denmark) or are in high economical dependence on the first ones (like Spain and Portugal is dependent on Germany). In any case the rising of the number of wind turbines is also due to the subsidies. As the crisis hit worse Spain and Portugal, they refused to encourage the solar panel utilization and the Chinese producers like Suntech Power are declining in their production and income.
To me the nuclear power plants are quite safe because people are afraid of them as of hell and are doing everything to protect them. I'm not ignoring disasters like that of Fukushima or of Chernobyl, but I think that there are just examples of human stupidity and irresponsibility. Fukushima was designed to support tsunamis up to 5.7 meters however was built in a place where there were possible higher tsunamis. Chernobyl was left to a group of inexperienced workers for a kind of a night stress test. Both could be avoided.
The future domains of radioactive elements utilization doesn't only limit to the energy industry. If people would have stopped the research of the radioactivity because it is harmful, we wouldn't have nuclear medicine, gamma ray sterilization and seed preservation and researches of physiology of plants and animals based on nuclear isotopes usage. Also just like we started to use plutonium and have ideas of thorium usage in power plants we could find ways to disintegrate other actinides and current nuclear waste into less harmful elements. In this way the nuclear technologies could clean themselves and lead to the nuclear disarmament by making this process profitable. The nuclear plants don't represent a risk for nuclear proliferation as any country could secretly buy uranium from North Korea or from criminal organizations and enrich it in facilities masked as large hospitals or something else. Nuclear plants and declared research facilities are more suspicious and provoke more attention and control from other countries.
I agree that the nuclear fusion is something like science fiction as we don't have large amounts of deuterium and tritium required for commercial usage of this technology and we don't have much knowledge in this domain. However i don't agree that the renewable sources of electricity are proven because there is no country with strong economy that assures a high rate of consumed electricity from renewable sources. South Korea which is a leading economy in Asia can't rely on such unsteady sources.
It's not only the air quality that makes difference between coal and nuclear fuel. Paradoxically a large coal thermal plant is more radioactive than a similar nuclear plant. This is due to the traces of uranium and thorium in coal released in ambiance.
You can't name renewable energy clean just because it doesn't pollute in in the area where it's used. As long as steel for wind turbines and photovoltaic cells for solar panels are produced in China or as long China doesn't care about pollution I won't admit the cleanness of these technologies.

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@hey - Wind and solar are the only two renewable energy sources that are strongly weather dependent, but they are not the only ones. In Germany, tests were done with so-called virtual power stations - a geographically widely spread network of renewable energy sources, largely wind and PV, but also biogas, that together were delivering stable 24/7/365 demand coverage. Not only Greenpeace and EREC, but also McKinsey and PriceWaterhouseCooper have shown with studies that a 100% renewable energy system can work and is actually cheaper than business as usual.
Like all new technologies, at the start of introduction, there needs to be some support to create a market. That is what Spain, Portugal, Germany, Denmark have been doing with as a result that prices for RE have dropped very fast towards - for on-shore wind and biogas - competitive prices and for PV to grid parity. Off-shore wind is in early development, as is geothermal. And these prices continue to fall.
I have gone through both Chernobyl and Fukushima. I don't want to have to go through it for a third time. The catastrophe is too large. Over time, it is inevitable that stupidities are coming forward again, that reactors get old, that care is sloppy - we see near misses every year. As long as you concentrate something so dangerous, you run a risk. On paper it may look safe, in reality nuclear power plants are and remain a risk.
Greenpeace is not saying we should stop radio-medicine. What we do say is that it makes sense to move from reactors to accelerators, like is happening now in Canada and the US. Because in that way we reduce risk and costs.
Thorium reactors, like other GenIV reactors, are not a silver bullet. First of all, they are still under development and before 2030 not commercially available - if at all. And we need to peak GHG emissions in 2015! Secondly, they theoretically will reduce amounts of waste, but not all, so that problem continues. Thirdly, they introduce the need for large scale reprocessing - the most polluting link in the nuclear fuel chain, which also is a basis technology for proliferation - see North Korea. The U-233 that is produced in Thorium reactors can also be used in weapons. But Thorium reactors can also be used to produce more plutonium. If nuclear energy were to grown beyond the niche they are filling now, proliferation would become an even more serious issue than it is already. Thorium and other GenIV reactors cannot deliver what is needed, and what they can deliver, they deliver too late and against a far too high price.
Your remark about radioactivity and coal is plainly wrong. Coal emits less radioactivity than nuclear power - radioactive waste contains a lot more radioactivity than a coal power plant is emitting over its life-time. But even under normal operation, the amount of radioactivity emitted into the environment by mining, fuel enrichment, production, operation and reprocessing per MWh produced is for nuclear power higher than for coal. Nevertheless, there are many reasons to want to fight coal as fuel. Health effects, climate change, destruction of landscapes and human lives. Both nuclear and coal have to be phased out and Greenpeace is giving good and valuable ideas how that can be done.
Maybe you should take the time to read the Korean energy [r]evolution scenario I mentioned above and then come back.
Until now, you have done nothing more than repeat the mythology that is put up by the nuclear industry.

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Arthur Yagudayev
says:

Speaking of U-233 use in weaponry, during the cold war Uranium-233 had great potential for use in bombs, since if it could be detonated would of made ...

Speaking of U-233 use in weaponry, during the cold war Uranium-233 had great potential for use in bombs, since if it could be detonated would of made a bomb much more powerful than the Uranium we use today, but a major flaw was found; even though it was extremely explosive, Uranium-233 emitted such powerful gamma rays that it interfered with the electronics of the bomb and essentially made it useless for bombs, this is why President Nixon axed the MSR program and went to the Light Water Reactors, we all know and love that meltdown. U-233 actually is very useful, not for bombs. After Uranium-233 is fissioned only 10% of by-products are left over and of the 10% leftover nearly all of the by-products can be fissioned as well. There are just 1% waste left over and that waste can be used to treat cancer and power space probes and rovers batteries. One of the isotopes left over from the fissioning of U-233 is Bismuth-213, a powerful cancer fighting isotope. Bi-213 is a powerful alpha particle that can be attached to an antibody which then will then go and find a cancer cell, attach itself to it and the Bi-213 particle will decay and release a single pulse of radiation through the cell, killing it and since Bi-213 decays only once vs today's cancer treatments which target cancer and healthy cells alike, Bi-21 will be like a smart bomb which only kills cancer cells. We can save the lives of over 3 million people per year by getting rid of fossil fuel air pollution and converting to a mix of wind, solar, hydro, geo and thorium, we can be like vermont which is powered by 80% nuclear, 15% hydro and close to 4% wind and 1% wood. Every year 3 million peopel die from air pollution every year! Even the worst nuclear accident in world history only killed 10,000 and caused approx 100,000 birth defects, but air pollution form coal, automobiles and gas plants are causing 3.5 million deaths per year and not to mention how many mroe birth defects from mercury poisoning. The real enemy here is the fossil fuel industry.

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Arthur Yagudayev
says:

We had the technology in the 1950's to construct LFTR reactors that are 100% meltdown proof and produce little to no radioactive and as a plus they burn waste and destroy it. Instead we are stuck with these water based reactors that are based on technology dating back from WW2. Alvin Weinberg warned the world about the water reactors we use today, because he knew that if cooling was lsot to the nuclear reactor, you can have a hydrogen explosion and a subsequent meltdown. had we built LFTR instead of the ancient Pressurized and boiling water reactors we use today, Chernobyl would've never happened, and even the Fukashima plant would not of exploded and melted down. The reactors we use today need constant human intervention to prevent a meltdown, while LFTR reactors are naturally meltdown proof and need no human intervention at all to prevent a meltdown. It is time we deactivate these bulky and dangerous dangerous reactors and fossil fuel plants and replace them with Wind, Solar, Thorium, Fusion and other types of clean energy. Please sign this petition for the meltdown proof LFTR reactor http://www.change.org/petitions/to-nuclear-regulatory-commission-department-of-energy-to-grant-licenses-for-meltdown-proof-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors-to-reduce-the-impact-of-climate-change-reduce-nuclear-waste-and-produce-leukemia-fighting-isotopes

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Arthur Yagudayev
says:

We had the technology in the 1950's to construct LFTR reactors that are 100% meltdown proof and produce little to no radioactive and as a plus the...

We had the technology in the 1950's to construct LFTR reactors that are 100% meltdown proof and produce little to no radioactive and as a plus they burn waste and destroy it. Instead we are stuck with these water based reactors that are based on technology dating back from WW2. Alvin Weinberg warned the world about the water reactors we use today, because he knew that if cooling was lsot to the nuclear reactor, you can have a hydrogen explosion and a subsequent meltdown. had we built LFTR instead of the ancient Pressurized and boiling water reactors we use today, Chernobyl would've never happened, and even the Fukashima plant would not of exploded and melted down. The reactors we use today need constant human intervention to prevent a meltdown, while LFTR reactors are naturally meltdown proof and need no human intervention at all to prevent a meltdown. It is time we deactivate these bulky and dangerous dangerous reactors and fossil fuel plants and replace them with Wind, Solar, Thorium, Fusion and other types of clean energy. Please sign this petition for the meltdown proof LFTR reactor http://www.change.org/petitions/to-nuclear-regulatory-commission-department-of-energy-to-grant-licenses-for-meltdown-proof-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactors-to-reduce-the-impact-of-climate-change-reduce-nuclear-waste-and-produce-leukemia-fighting-isotopes